Follow Cosmic Book News

Kids Didn't Comprehend Jim Starlin Cosmic Says Bendis

Body

Brian Michael Bendis and Jeph Loeb participated in an interview with EW.com.

The duo discussed their upcoming Marvel books, Guardians of the Galaxy and Nova.

EW asked them about the cosmic stories of the past and what they meant to them (bold my own).

Bendis' Response:

It was unfettered imagination. It was fitful creators, too, who felt like the comics page was too small for them. I’ve studied this a great deal and guys like Jim Starlin, they were trying things that the newsprint couldn’t even handle. It was bursting with imagination. And for readers if you were comfortable, if you knew what you would get with Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four, here were these other books that were just wild cards. Sometimes they went to[o] far, they were a little crazy and out there and probably too much for a lot of kids to comprehend or get through. But look at all the things that sprung from it that we absolutely love now.

I loved when things in the 1970s and into the 1980s started moving closer to the center of the Marvel Universe with something like the Infinity Gauntlet, where Starlin crazy-slammed right into the middle of the Marvel Universe, and half the heroes are dead and you’re reading this gorgeous book, with George Perez art, and you’re thinking, ‘What is happening, how can this be — I don’t see the end of this story?’ It was very, very exciting for me as a young reader. That was an inspiration toward what we’re doing with Nova and Guardians: instead of being thrown out there in the ether of the Marvel Universe, we’re heading toward the gooey center. The Guardians are going to be dealing with things that are on Earth, near Earth, and threatening Earth. You take crazy ideas and rub them up against the expectations that readers have and that’s when you maybe get something interesting. And the things that are already exciting or scary in the ether become much more exciting and even scarier when they come to Earth.